


Take me back to the start

by LadyRhiyana



Series: Season 8 reaction ficlets [9]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Ghosts, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 11:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21252728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: Brienne and Jaime go back to the beginning. [Not their beginning. Much earlier than that.]





	Take me back to the start

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first three paragraphs just after episode 8.06 aired. They've been lying abandoned ever since, but I finally decided to work them into something with a happy ending as the last of my immediate reaction stories. 
> 
> And in honour of Halloween, I've added a ghost. 
> 
> Title is from Coldplay.

They lay his body out on a bier, dressed in crimson and gold, his wounds cleaned and concealed by the Silent Sisters. He could almost be sleeping, but Jaime had never been so still and silent in all his life, not even in slumber. 

Brienne stood vigil for seven days, standing at the foot of the bier in full armour. He had saved the city of King’s Landing once. For a time, he had been the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Surely he deserved that much, at least. 

Unseeing, unthinking, unconscious of the weight of her armour, she stood witness, grieving for what was and what could have been. 

**

Smallfolk and highborn alike filed past to farewell him. 

The much-diminished Lannisters, of course, came to grieve; the remaining lords and knights of the Westerlands came to pay their respects to a fallen leader. 

The smallfolk of King’s Landing and the servants of the Red Keep came because they had a tale to tell or a memory to recount.

Jaime had lived in the Red Keep and in King’s Landing since he was 15 years old. The golden Kingslayer, sharp-smiling and handsome, had been one of their own: the young white-cloaked boy who’d suffered with them during the worst of Aerys’ madness, and had put an end to it; the handsome golden knight, a tourney favourite, of Robert’s early years; the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who had tried to bring honour back to the court; even in later years, under Queen Cersei, he had tried to check the worst of her impulses. 

As they paused by the bier, sometimes they would offer a tribute or whisper a word of thanks. Sometimes they would share their story with Brienne. 

As the long days of her vigil passed, she began to feel a little light-headed – from fatigue, from the smell of incense, from the slow realisation that Jaime was dead and would never return, and that the body on the bier was no more than dead flesh, the vital spark fled. 

On the fifth day, she began to hallucinate. The tide of mourners and novelty-seekers had slowed to a trickle on the fourth day, and now on the fifth the sept was empty, a slow chill seeping into the empty chamber, the sounds of her restless shifting echoing in the silent hush.

_I must say,_ Jaime’s voice whispered in her ear, _I appear to be more beloved in death than I ever was in life._

Brienne started, whirling around with a crash. “Jaime!” she gasped, her eyes darting to the body laid out on the bier, some part of her desperately hoping for a miracle. 

But no. It was as still and lifeless as ever. 

_No miracles for me, I’m afraid,_ the voice said again. _Not for oathbreakers and sister-fuckers._

“You’re not –” she hissed, but then stopped at the sound of his familiar laughter. 

_Aren’t I?_ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a slight flicker of light, a faint transparent vision of a golden-haired boy all in white. The cynical tone was at odds with the boy’s expression of youthful eagerness. _You always did think too much of me._

“And you never thought enough of yourself.” Brienne sighed. “Look at us. You’re dead, and I’m still arguing with you.”

The boy smiled Jaime’s bright smile, reckless and cocksure; he looked heartbreakingly young, and Brienne wanted nothing more than to protect him from all possible harm. 

_Don’t cry, Ser Brienne,_ he said. _Not even you could have protected me from myself._

And then he was gone.

**

Afterwards, without dragons, without magic, without infamy or tyranny or grand heroism – without _Jaime_ – the world seemed much smaller, somehow. 

As time passed, long years of peace and stability interrupted by brief periods of strife, easily quelled, the wars following Good King Robert’s death began to assume an aura of romance and adventure. Tales of Ser Brienne the Brave, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, were told all over Westeros: of how she left Tarth to serve as a Rainbow Guard to Renly Baratheon (who, over the years, had become the most romantic of the doomed five kings); of how she rescued the Queen in the North and became her sworn protector. The tales all named her as the first female knight in Westeros, but none mentioned the man who knighted her; they spoke of her famous sword, Oathkeeper, but were silent on the blade’s origins. 

She was still known as the Maid of Tarth. 

Jaime, she thought, would have derived a great deal of cynical amusement from that. 

One day she realised that she was older than Jaime would ever be. There were grey threads in her fair hair, and her bones and her old wounds ached in the mornings; when she looked at herself in the mirror she saw Lord Commander Ser Brienne of Tarth, grave and honourable – 

But where was the woman who for three short months had loved Jaime Lannister, and been loved in return?

That Brienne was as much a ghost as Jaime, just-knighted, young and eager, forever fifteen years old. 

** 

Her end, when it came, was sudden and painless. 

** 

She had expected darkness. 

But she opened her eyes to a thick, fog-shrouded forest – _the Kingswood,_ she thought, wondering – and the aftermath of a battle. Men moaned and cried as they lay bleeding and dying, and as she picked her way through the tangled undergrowth she noted the sigils on the banners: Crakehall and other lesser houses, the pure white of the Kingsguard, and beside it a black and red sigil she had not seen for decades. 

Her hair stood on end, her skin prickling, and she shivered. _I have seen this before,_ she realised, _or imagined it. Jaime spoke of it, once –_

She was wearing armour, carrying a sword and shield. Her old aches and scars had vanished; she felt young and strong again, as she had not been since she first left Tarth. When she caught a glimpse of her face in a discarded steel breastplate, she saw the raw-boned, ugly girl she had once been, so long ago. 

And then she came to a clearing in the woods and saw the old tableau, as familiar as a long-forgotten dream: a tall, fair-haired knight in a white cloak, knighting a young golden-haired boy with a sword pale and crystalline as the dawn. 

She ventured closer and watched as Jaime arose, a knight of the Seven Kingdoms; as Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, embraced him and smiled at him proudly. “Ser Jaime Lannister,” he said, and the men around him cheered. 

Afterwards, the newly-made knight turned and looked at her with wide-eyed curiosity and growing interest. 

“Oh,” he said, “it’s you. I saw you on the field earlier – you fought like a demon!” And then – “are you really a woman?”


End file.
